John Carter and the Princess of Barsoom
by M. Handy
Summary: The Civil War left John Carter questioning the purpose of his life. Little did he know that a chance escape into an Arizona cave and the secrets it held would lead him to an adventure so impossible it would defy imagination. Through loss of friends, meeting new allies, and a love he would chase across a whole planet, John received once simple choice: Find himself or die.


John Carter and the Princess of Barsoom

By: Edgar Rice Burroughs and Matthew Handy

Chapter 1: On the Arizona Hills

He was an old man by all accounts, possibly a hundred. Possibly more. The weight of those years told on him at times, especially when he turned his mind to the past. Not that one could tell by outward appearances. So far as he could recollect he had always been able to pass for a man of about thirty, nor did he remember a father dandling him on his knee.

Yet the old soldier knew mortality all too well. He had seen its truth time and time again. And though he seemed to live forever, John Carter of Virginia never doubted his own time would come, the day he would fight his last battle.

The close of the Civil War found him the owner of several hundred thousand Confederate dollars and a captain's commission in the cavalry arm of an army which no longer existed; the servant of a state which had vanished alongside the hopes of the South. Masterless, penniless, and with his only means of livelihood gone, he was glad when a letter arrived from Captain James K. Powell of Richmond.

So many friends had fallen in battle, the victims of war proper helped on by starvation, accident, and disease. After the horrors Carter witnessed, an invitation to head southwest and attempt to retrieve his fallen fortunes scrabbling in the clay of Arizona was too much a gift horse to refuse.

He accepted. Perhaps it was a sort of penance. Months of hard work and privation followed, all the better to leave his past to bury itself in those blood-soaked fields.

And that is why John Carter felt a completely different man as he put down the well-worn spade and wiped a trickle of sweat from his damp brow. He had worked up quite a sweat despite the relatively cool winter of 1865. Carter had never seen such a sultry December, but apparently Mother Nature went in for that sort of thing in these parts.

The Arizona wastelands, strewn with hills, painted valleys, and vast tracks of sunbaked red earth, could hardly be called inviting, but for those strong enough to withstand its gauntlet of woes it was the perfect frontier to make one's mark.

"Did ya decide to break off work early?"

John started. He hadn't even heard Jim coming up behind him. Turning, Carter eyed his old comrade, a spare man no older than thirty-five. Powel's full beard and mustache stood in stark contrast to his own smooth shaven face and short brown hair. Powel was every bit the southern gentleman, and a part of Carter realized his globetrotting ways had made him something of an outsider even among his kin in Virginia. Joining the Confederate cause more out of a sense of loyal duty than a belief in their cause, it soon became clear that the man who had won the friendships of an old and powerful emperor and several lesser kings was not cut from the same cloth as his fellow soldiers.

In the end, they shared little more in common than allegiance to their state.

Carter's clear gray eyes drifted to the distance and he took a halfhearted swipe at the sandstone in front of him. "No. I just needed to rest a piece."

The other man clapped him on the shoulder, raising a cloud of dust. "Don't worry, John. This slump can't last forever. We're on the right track. I can practically smell that gold."

OOO

And he was right. The very next day a chance hammer blow revealed one of the most remarkable gold-bearing quartz vein that their wildest dreams had ever pictured. Powell told his friend that they had uncovered over a million dollars worth of ore.

Which led to another problem. Their equipment was crude in the extreme. One of them had to return to civilization, purchase the necessary machinery and return with a sufficient force of men to properly work the mine. Powell, a mining engineer by education, was familiar with both the country and the mechanical requirements of mining. They determined that it would be best for him to make the trip while Carter held down their claim against the remote possibility of its being jumped by some wandering prospector.

So he packed his provisions on two of their burros and mounted his horse, bidding John good-bye a mere two days after their discovery. Powell started down the mountainside toward the valley, beyond which lay a trading outpost.

The morning of his departure was, like nearly all Arizona mornings, clear and beautiful. Carter could see him and his little pack animals picking their way down the mountainside toward the valley. All during the morning he would catch the occasional glimpse of them as they topped a hogback or came out upon a level plateau. Slowly his figure shrunk from a man to a doll, finally becoming a shapeless smudge quivering in the liquid heat. His last sight of Powell was about three in the afternoon as he entered the shadows of the range on the opposite side of the valley.

Some half an hour later, John happened to glance casually across the valley. He had just taken a sip of water but suddenly found his mouth going dry and the contradictory sensation of icy fingers prickling their way down his spine. Three little spots appeared in about the same place he had last seen his friend. Virginians were not given to needless worrying, but the more he tried to convince himself that the dots he had seen were only antelope or wild horses, the less sure he became.

There had been whispers of hostile Indians when they entered the territory. Neither man having seen evidence to back up that claim, had they become careless in the extreme. Powell was even wont to ridicule the stories they heard from other settlers and soldiers of fortune. If great numbers of these vicious marauders haunted the trails, taking their toll in lives and torture of every white party they came across, surely they would have found concrete evidence long before.

Reason told him what he saw were animals heading to a watering hole. Reason told him to sit tight and hold down their claim. But nations were not forged nor frontiers conquered by practical, reasonable men. Powell was well armed and an experienced fighter. However, Carter had lived and fought for years among the Sioux in the North. His friends chances against a cunning party of trailing Apaches were slimmer than a snowstorm's chance of crossing the equator.

He could endure the uncertainty no longer. Seizing two Colt revolvers and a carbine from the weapons locker, he strapped two belts of cartridges about his chest and caught his horse's stirrup, swinging himself easily into the saddle.

A swift kick of his spurs and he'd started down the trail taken by Powell that morning. As soon as Carter reached level ground he urged his mount into a canter and continued until close upon dusk. For mile upon mile a single, clear line of hoof prints trudged easily on the path. Had he conjured up impossible dangers like some nervous housewife? The way things looked, the only reward for his pains would be a good laugh when he caught up with his partner.

Then Carter's blood ran cold. From the concealing camouflage of field of brush, he discovered the point where other tracks joined those of Powell. They were the hoofs of unshod ponies, three of them. And by the sand they left scattered in their wake, the ponies had been galloping.

Kicking his horse to a new tempo, he followed until darkness forced him to await the rising of the moon. Still far from certain about what he would find at the end of this chase, he refused to allow that to obstruct his sense of responsibility. That sentiment accounted for many adventures over the years and the honors bestowed by three republics in whose service his sword had run red more than once.

About nine o'clock the moonlight cast a sufficient beacon for Carter to proceed. He continued at a brisk trot. Then at midnight, while wind whispered through rocky crevices, he reached the watering hole where Powell had expected to camp. There had been no guiding firelight and he came upon the spot unexpectedly, finding it entirely deserted. He saw no signs of having it been recently occupied as a camp.

Dew settled upon his horse's mane. John looked up into the heavens, catching a glimpse of the rusty speck of Mars in those clear skies. With no cloud cover it had actually became cool, but the lone man gave these things scant attention.

The tracks of the pursuing horsemen, for they could be nothing else, continued after Powell after only a brief stop at the hole for water. By their gait he estimated that they shadowed at the same rate of speed as Powell.

John no longer conjectured. The trailers were Apaches and that was that. He urged his horse onward, hoping against hope that he might close the gap in time. The pace was dangerous in that pale light, especially in that treacherous landscape. For all he knew, the Indians had heard his pursuit and any number of them might be waiting in ambush.

It did not matter. A friend's life was at stake!

The faint report of two shots far ahead cut any further speculation short. If Powell ever needed help it was now. Urging his horse to his topmost speed up the narrow mountain trail, John left the soil churned, forgetting every concern in the overmastering drive to save a human soul.

Another mile passed. He forged ahead without hearing further sounds when the trail passed through a narrow, overhanging gorge just before entering suddenly upon a tableland, and the sight which met his eyes filled him with dread.

For a stretch, the little plateau was white with the sun-bleached finery of Indian tepees, and there were probably half a thousand red warriors clustered around some object near the center of the camp. Their attention was so wholly riveted that they did not notice the newcomer at first. He could easily have turned back into the dark recesses of the gorge and escape in perfect safety.

John Carter had received the honors of a hero on more than one occasion, but he never considered himself cut from that cloth. In all of the instances where his acts placed him in a stare down with death, he recalled no other alternative possibility. Evidently his subconscious drove him into the path of duty without recourse to tiresome mental processes.

Be that as it may, it would be some hours before it occurred to John that retreat had been an option. He could not see through the ranks of red bodies, but instinct told him Powell was the center attraction. In an instant he whipped out his revolvers and lashed his stallion into a charge, shooting rapidly and whooping at the top of his lungs. Singlehanded, he could not have pursued better tactics. It never occurred to them that a single man would take on an entire army of warriors. Convinced by surprise that not less than a regiment of regulars was upon them, they turned and fled in every direction for their bows, arrows, and rifles.

Rage filled Carter then, for the dissolving crowd disclosed a horrific view. Under the clear rays of the Arizona moon laid Powell, his body fairly bristling with the hostile arrows of the braves. His friend was dead, Carter knew that, and yet he would have saved his body from mutilation at the hands of the Apaches no less than the man himself from death.

John slid down in the saddle and got caught Powell's cartridge belt, drawing him up across the withers of his mount. By that point it would be more hazardous to return by the way he came than to continue across the plateau, so, putting spurs to his poor beast, he made a dash for a narrow opening to the pass which he could distinguish on the far side of the tableland.

A cry apprised John that the Indians had discovered their lone assailant and he was dogged by imprecations, arrows, and rifle balls. Fortunately it was difficult to aim anything but imprecations accurately by moonlight. Deadly projectiles lanced all about him. A bullet whizzed close by his left ear, but John had the wind at his back and his pursuers were startled by the sudden and unexpected manner of his arrival. Only that unique combination of factors permitted him to reach the shadows of the surrounding peaks before an orderly hunt could be organized.

Soon shouts of anger vanished beneath the clomp of horse hooves as his mount, traveling practically unguided, picked his way along the trails in the general direction of the pass. Thus it happened that he stumbled upon a little used defile which led to the summit of the range and not to the pass which Carter had hoped would carry him to the valley and ultimate safety.

But John realized he was on the wrong trail when the yells of the pursuers grew fainter and fainter far off to his left. In those darkened, predawn hours the Indians had passed to the left of the jagged rock formation at the edge of the plateau. John's mount had borne his riders to the right.

Riders? It was rider and he knew it. Yet John clung to the tenuous hope that he might be able to revive him. But for that he needed to find a place of comparative safety. He drew rein on a little level promontory overlooking the trail below. On his left hand he saw the party of pursuing savages disappearing around the point of a neighboring peak.

The Indians would soon discover that they were on the wrong trail. He would be a fool to believe otherwise. Before long they would double back and the search would be renewed in the right track.

The ruddy stallion had a smooth gait, but slipped from time to time on the hard rock faces. Carter remained mute. His friend's blood slicked the animal's sides, and though well trained the beast grew uneasy at the smell. John tried not to look, tried not to think, and plunged ahead.

He had gone but a short distance further when a more level trail opened up around the face of a high, crumbling cliff. The trail was flat and broad, leading upward and more or less in the right direction. The cliff arose for several hundred feet on his right. On the other side a nearly perpendicular drop into a rocky ravine threatened death no less sure than the Apaches ever could.

He had followed this trail for perhaps a hundred yards when a sharp turn brought him into the shadow of a mesa and the mouth of a large cave half hidden by rocks. The aperture was about four feet in height and three feet wide, and at this opening the trail ended.

At that moment morning broke with the customary lack of dawn, a startling characteristic of Arizona. Daylight illuminated the countryside and John Carter saw there was no alternative. He had come to a dead end.

It would have to do.

Dismounting, he dragged Powell under cover and laid him upon the ground, but the most painstaking examination failed to reveal the faintest spark of life. Undaunted, he pulled out his canteen and forced water between his dead lips, bathed his face and rubbed his hands, working over him continuously for the better part of an hour in the face of the fact that he knew him to be dead.

Carter slumped to the floor beside his friend's body. Truth be told he was exhausted, and the fire born of adrenaline had long since burned itself out. He had always been fond of Powell, by all accounts a man in every respect, a polished southern gentleman, and a staunch and true comrade. A wave of grief washed over him as he finally gave up his crude endeavors at resuscitation.

John Carter had been too late to rescue the last of his old friends.

He heaved a sigh. There was no time for such emotions or useless regrets. They would keep for now.

Leaving Powell's body where it lay by the cave mouth, he crept further inside to reconnoiter. He found a large chamber, possibly a hundred feet in diameter and thirty or forty feet in height. Walls and floor alike were smooth, well-worn, and covered from top to bottom in some of the most intricate, colorful etchings, and many other evidences that the cave had, at some remote period, been inhabited. And though these decorative carvings gleamed as though plated with gold or covered by enamel, the light they cast illuminated nothing but artwork itself. In fact, the back of the cave was so lost in dense shadow that he could not distinguish whether there were openings into other apartments or not.

Still, the collage of pictographs held sufficient interest in and of themselves to slake his curiosity on what might lay beyond.

OOO

The thought first occurred to John that this was an Indian holy place, a shrine or tomb dedicated to some mighty hero of their ranks. If so, he may have stumbled across the one niche of safety in all the surrounding peaks. The sanction of taboo was enough to keep races less uncivilized than these natives from crossing the boundaries of religious convention.

He quickly gave over that thought. Apache culture was well established, but this place, despite its being well preserved, gave off an aura of antiquity which dwarfed the red-skinned race into infancy.

One wall depicted a shaft of light shining from some heavenly body, a crimson star or planet, striking the ground where knelt a fair-skinned, fair-haired, robe-clad figure. The vivid colors made it all come to life before his eyes, if only he understood what it meant. On closer inspection, the radiant beam was not merely golden in color, but actually made of the precious metal, polished and still lustrous even after the many ages which must have passed since its construction.

Opposite this stood the image of a great city, high walled and vast. Massive buildings, crowned by majestic spires, jutted skyward. It was a metropolis at once splendorous and barbaric in its lines, all sharp angles and overhanging terraces. None of this could be of Apache origin, but no culture predating them could have hoped to create such wonders.

He was still puzzling over this when he chanced to glance up. A third mural spanned the unnaturally smooth ceiling of the cave. Obsidian night and stars cast in glittering gemstones. As the sun continued to rise outside, these artificial luminaries began to blaze with an internal fire. He squinted, frowning at this wonder, at once so beautiful and impossible.

John Carter was no astronomer, but he recognized a rendering of the solar system when he saw it, only this mockup was far more detailed than any he had ever seen. The jewels embedded in the lacquered rock were connected to rings of gold ascribing their orbits, and he saw evidence of asteroids and planets of which no one on earth had ever imagined.

Could a civilization millennia old have possessed technology equal to, or perhaps even surpassing, his own?

He peered back at the massive city. The unearthly vegetation surrounding it was lush and ruddy, unlike any plant life he ever saw. Perhaps the pigment used to tint it had faded over the many years, but why would that fade if the other murals had not?

Though this fascinating discovery held his attention, his pursuit at the hands of the Indians had not been forgotten. So it was that when he heard the sound of approaching horses, followed by the gentle scrape of bare feet on stone, he instinctively loosened his revolver in its holster. Half turning, he caught sight of a painted face spying on him from around the mouth of the cave.

Not hesitating, the Virginian drew his pistol and fired point blank. In that cramped echo chamber, the explosion nearly deafened John, but the head had withdrawn even as he pulled the trigger, escaping death by fractions of an inch.

John whirled and made for the dark recesses of the cavern's interior, soon losing himself in shadow laden gloom, fearful that any moment might see him knocking face first into solid stone. Behind him he heard the chaotic babel of a dozen voices, too fractured by bouncing off the cave walls to be understood even if he possessed a perfect grasp of the tongue.

They were coming for him. He did not need to speak Apache to know that. He had interrupted their fiendish pleasure and they required recompense in his red blood.

Running his hand along the wall to keep track of his progress, the white man kept up his reckless pace until a single glimmer of light, feebler than the gleam of moonlight off of a robin's egg. Then, using that marker to steer by, he glided along the passage in search of safety or its kissing cousin, a place to hide. Still, he could run until his legs gave out or hide so that no city bred man could hope to discover him; none of that would matter if these savage brutes decided they _wanted_ him.

Such morbid thoughts accompanied him as the walls opened out and he emerged into another pocket chamber. Though large, it was not half the size of the previous cavern. Yet every surface had been leveled and smoothed by the unmistakable hand of man. Again he was forced to marvel at what millennia old civilization could possibly have achieved such architectural feats as this.

On the far end of the chamber, surrounded by paintings, glyphs, and pictograms he could not begin to make sense of, stood a large structure, big as a covered wagon, in the form of a fierce, many-legged, lizard-like creature, crouched as though preparing to charge.

Or… he spied that the statue bore a saddle. Could it be bending the knee to await a rider? Carter did not know. White as new fallen snow, smoother than glass, it lay nestled against the wall, giving off a pale glow from deep inside its translucent, shell-like casing.

For a moment, Carter stared, dumbfounded. However, the sounds the chase coming from the passage sobered him. No other tunnel led from the chamber. In all the adventure novels he read, sacred or secret places like this were always honeycombed by concealed passages. Perhaps searching this uncanny machination would yield another way out.

He had to try.

Making a hurried but systematic examination of the walls, he turned his attention fully on the white beast, rapping at it with his knuckles and listening for a hollow spot which might reveal the existence of a hidden cavity in the body. Finally, he came to the statue's front end and his breath caught. The wide mouth dividing its wedge-shaped head lay open in a soundless snarl. But when he peered down its gullet, a dark gulf revealed itself.

Not pausing to consider the ramifications, he plunged his arm to the shoulder down the statue's throat, groping along a series of smooth patches and narrow ridges until his questing fingers reached an open nook deep inside. A small smile graced his countenance, hope filling him. Now to find a pressure switch or something of the like. He felt and found a small protuberance at the bottom of the little hollow.

He pressed it, and to his utter surprise a mechanism inside the statue clacked. But the joy was short lived. Something hard and cold snapped around his wrist, locking in place with ratcheting finality.

_By heaven! _Carter thought. Had he just been shackled to this hellish beast in the face of his pursuers? Wrenching his arm, he was relieved to find it came free without much difficulty. But his eye caught sight of something glinting on his wrist, a wide band or armlet, and realized that this was what he had felt clamp around it. The wristlet was white and gleaming, much like the statue itself, only ornate, covered by gemstones, runes, and patterns he could not decipher. He pulled on it, but it would not come free, and strangely enough, it was warm to the touch.

He had not long to ponder this before a stealthy sound apprised him of the nearing braves. Pulling his weapon, Carter whirled to face the danger when a gem on the armlet flared and his muscles went utterly rigid as though turned to stone. His entire body, charged by sky fire, burned and threatened to burst. The pistol, not yet firmly in his grasp, dropped from nerveless fingers, clattering uselessly to the floor.

Panic seized him. To be held frozen in the face of advancing death was bad enough, but his very being felt like it might erupt into liquid flame at any moment. The pain nearly blinded him, and only his paralysis stopped him from screaming as the surging heat beneath his skin flayed every nerve down its smallest fiber.

And then a war-bonneted, paint-streaked face thrust from the shadows, savage eyes looking into John's. Another savage followed, and a third and fourth and fifth, craning their necks over the shoulders of their fellows whom they could not pass in the narrow tunnel.

Each face, fierce and malevolent, gloated over his plight, either not caring or not realizing the true depths of his helplessness. The first who spied him motioned to one of his companions, a tall, lean warrior bearing a strung longbow. The feathered brave fitted an arrow on the string, drawing it back before raising the weapon on a level with his heart.

It was the last word in fearsome predicaments for a man who had ever been used to fighting for his life. With a superhuman effort Carter strove to break his awful bonds. It was an effort of the mind, of the will, of the nerves; not muscular, for he could not move even so much as his little finger, but none the less mighty for all that.

And then a second gem sparked to life on the wristband, followed by an intricate pattern of tiny lights, forming a design not unlike the star map from the previous room. As he gazed it seemed to call to the unthinkable void, to draw him as the lodestone attracts a particle of iron.

The energy blotted out all else. Consciousness threatened to flee him at any moment. Something snapped and he felt himself dissolved into his elementary molecules, drawn with the suddenness of thought through the trackless immensity of space. There was an instant of extreme cold followed by utter darkness.


End file.
